Just as it has been for centuries of immigrants and desperately lost, subway map-reading tourists, New York City is a favorite destination for angry, carnage-minded mutants, monsters and aliens -- though they intend to destroy the city's landmarks, not capture them in Instagram photos.
The latest invaders are the Chitauri, the shape-shifting aliens that descend upon Manhattan in the climactic battle in The Avengers. And with their starships and smaller, strikingly Kawasaki Jet Ski-like racers, they certainly succeed in wreaking havoc on the city. To walk out of a screening of the movie into the light of Park Avenue is a shock, with its clean streets and undented skyline, so to get a sense of just how much damage the Chitauri would have caused had the film been real life, The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Kinetic Analysis Corp., one of the leading disaster-cost prediction and assessment firms in the nation.
In an exclusive report for THR, KAC, led by Chuck Watson and Sara Jupin, employed computer models used for predicting the destruction of nuclear weapons and concluded that the physical damage of the invasion would be $60 billion-$70 billion, with economic and cleanup costs hitting $90 billion. Add on the loss of thousands of lives, and KAC puts the overall price tag at $160 billion.
For context, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cost $83 billion, Hurricane Katrina cost $90 billion, and the tsunami in Japan last year washed away $122 billion.
VIDEOS: Behind the Scenes of Marvel's The Avengers
Although many buildings in the fight's East Midtown arena suffered extensive structural damage, most were limited to the more superficial destruction of windows, facade and some interiors. Those buildings that had their tops crushed, though, would be especially costly and time-consuming to fix, as would be Grand Central Station, through which a warship crashed.
"The extensive damage to Grand Central Terminal could prove highly disruptive, depending on the subsurface damage to the subway system," KAC notes. "Although such damage is unlikely, as the 9/11 events showed, collapsing buildings can cause significant damage to subsurface infrastructure such as gas, communications and electrical systems. Detailed site surveys will be required to assess the state of the subterranean infrastructure."
KAC also predicts that liability would be a major issue. Who, exactly, will have to pay for the damage? S.H.I.E.L.D., they note, is likely protected as a government agency, though probes eventually will look into its role in predicting, preventing and responding to the invasion -- just as they looked into the Ghostbusters.
"Most insurance policies have special provisions for acts of war, civil unrest or terrorism," KAC adds. "Given the involvement of individuals considered deities in some cultures (Thor, Loki), there is even the potential to classify the event as an 'act of God,' though that designation would be subject to strenuous theological and legal debate."
Watson said he was surprised by a lower-than-expected total. "Compared to the aliens in Independence Day, for example, these guys were amateurs," he told THR. "Of course, the Chitauri/Loki alliance were more interested in conquest and ruling, whereas the ID aliens were just looking for lunch or something."
Still, with a $700 million two-week gross to protect, Marvel and Disney are lucky all the damage happened onscreen.

Yeah I don't think the aliens from The Avengers deserve to even be compared to the aliens from Independence day.

The first got their butts kicked by by a few guys in tights with super strength, some lightening, and a high tech prosthesis. The other exterminated a large portion of mankind, destroyed almost every capital city and probably made the valuable of currency essentially worthles. Lastly, at the end of the movie they aren't exactly defeated.

Yeah I don't think the aliens from The Avengers deserve to even be compared to the aliens from Independence day.

The first got their butts kicked by by a few guys in tights with super strength, some lightening, and a high tech prosthesis. The other exterminated a large portion of mankind, destroyed almost every capital city and probably made the valuable of currency essentially worthles. Lastly, at the end of the movie they aren't exactly defeated.

avenger aliens were just invading and got stopped by superhumans

the other aliens had all the time and positioned only to be killed thanks to a virus from a mac

That's my only quirk with the movie. I'm not saying they should've gone all Xtreme ultradark mood backlash at the end like, say, Watchmen, but it's like no one remembers a giant underground ultraexpensive top secret scientific compound is simply obliterated into a 3 km wide pit, a giant ultraexpensive flying aircraft carrier is left nearly beyond repair, interdimensional aliens destroy Manhattan and kill like 3 million people in an hour before anyone could get their shit togheter, and by the end a whole race of interdimenssional beings have a grudge on all of earth . :whatthechrist:

I like how they wanted to nuke New York after maybe an hour or two. "It was lost" according to them but the Avengers were holding it pretty well and the National Guard was finally getting into action. With some really heavy mobilization from surrounding Guard units and regular Army or Marines they could've probably held it for days assuming they were constantly resupplied with more boots on the ground and the portal didn't stop spilling out the same amount of aliens and shit as we saw in the movie. I was expecting them to FLOOD in but it was like 40 craft at a time and one or two warships every thirty or more minutes.

Also why did no one scramble jets? I should've seen strike aircraft firing on those warships within ten or twenty minutes.

I actually laughed my ass off when one of the giant worms was killed in the air and just collapsed on top of a building. I was just thinking to myself. Who the fuck is going to clean that up, it's a giant metallic worm on top of a building!

I reckon they could have used their abilities to actually clean up though.
Instead of just going out for shawarma

I actually laughed my ass off when one of the giant worms was killed in the air and just collapsed on top of a building. I was just thinking to myself. Who the fuck is going to clean that up, it's a giant metallic worm on top of a building!

I reckon they could have used their abilities to actually clean up though.
Instead of just going out for shawarma

That's actually pretty much what my friend leaned over and said to me during that scene.

KAC also predicts that liability would be a major issue. Who, exactly, will have to pay for the damage? S.H.I.E.L.D., they note, is likely protected as a government agency, though probes eventually will look into its role in predicting, preventing and responding to the invasion -- just as they looked into the Ghostbusters.
"Most insurance policies have special provisions for acts of war, civil unrest or terrorism," KAC adds. "Given the involvement of individuals considered deities in some cultures (Thor, Loki), there is even the potential to classify the event as an 'act of God,' though that designation would be subject to strenuous theological and legal debate."

The bold part made me laugh too much. Could you imagine a case where they would have a courtroom debate and Thor would be present to account for the supposed "act of god"?